Team Building - Ask and Lead to SUCCEED - Leadership Q&A

Questions we covered:

00:00 Intro

00:19 How to bring an existing team closer together?

03:11 One Team member is affecting the team negatively what to do?

05:12 How to manage team performance?

07:21 How to select the right team members for a new team?

09:00 Examples on engagement rules for teams

Team Building

Welcome to the latest edition of Succeed's Q&A session, a weekly event dedicated to fostering leadership and education. I’m Jens Heitland, founder of Succeed, and in this session, we delved into crucial aspects of team management and leadership.

1. Fostering Team Cohesion:

A vital question raised was about enhancing the bond within an existing team. The key lies in developing a shared vision and direction, crafted collaboratively rather than imposed. This approach not only aligns goals but also fosters unity. Celebrating collective successes, spending time together outside work, and engaging in enjoyable activities can significantly strengthen team bonds. These strategies, simple yet effective, are essential for any leader striving to bring their team closer.

2. Addressing Negative Impact from Team Members:

A common challenge in teams is the negative influence of a particular member. Addressing this issue requires understanding the underlying causes, which often are not apparent initially. Leaders should engage in one-on-one conversations to uncover these reasons. It's crucial to involve the entire team in finding a solution, ensuring that the person causing the friction is part of the resolution process. Transparency and clear communication are key in resolving such situations.

3. Managing Team Performance:

Setting clear goals and measurable KPIs is fundamental in managing team performance. It's essential to understand that performance metrics should not intimidate but rather serve as transparent indicators of progress. Balancing team dynamics is crucial – recognizing overachievers while supporting those who may not always perform at the top level. Leaders must ensure that the pursuit of performance does not lead to negative team dynamics or tensions.

4. Selecting Team Members for New Teams:

When forming a new team, aligning members with the team's goals and vision is crucial. Diversity in thought and background can greatly contribute to a team’s success. Internal recruitment is often beneficial, as it brings in individuals who are already familiar with the organization's culture. Ensuring the team is cohesive and sustainable even after achieving initial goals is a critical consideration for any leader.

5. Establishing Clear Engagement Rules:

Creating engagement rules should be a collaborative effort, not dictated by the leader alone. Open and honest discussions are fundamental in building a healthy team environment. Teaching and practicing effective feedback methods is essential, as it maintains the team’s self-regulatory mechanisms and ensures adherence to agreed-upon norms and behaviors.

This week's Q&A session underscored the importance of vision, collaboration, transparency, and effective communication in leadership. For more insights, join us every Saturday for our Q&A sessions or visit our blog at wearesucceed.com. Feel free to reach out with your questions – we're here to support your leadership journey.

Thank you for joining us, and I look forward to our next session. Have a fantastic weekend!

Transcript:

Team Building Q&A

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Succeed. Succeed is a leadership platform where we want to bring leadership, education to 1 billion people. 

[00:00:10] My name is Jens Heitland I'm the founder of Succeed, and this is our Q&A every Saturday.

[00:00:16] Let's directly start with the first question, 

[00:00:19] How to support an existing team to get closer together?

[00:00:23] Number one thing is having a cleared vision and a clear direction, 

[00:00:28] which means building a direction that they are contributing to build. 

[00:00:32] Not just putting that on top of them, enable them and use the opportunity to build a direction together with the team.

[00:00:40] Yes, maybe you as the leader or the organization has a direction, but you can bring them together and say, Hey, let's build this. Let's look into how do we get there? 

[00:00:49] So it's direction, vision, and as well a roadmap to the future. If you do this together, that's already bringing the team closer together. 

[00:00:58] Of course the biggest opportunity is building success.

[00:01:03] A team that is successful together, like a football team that's winning, is getting closer together. You're celebrating afterwards. So look into possibilities, how you can generate success with that team. 

[00:01:15] Very, very easy to organize and then celebrate the success that gets people closer together.

[00:01:22] Another thing is spent more time with each other. Very simple, and I would propose doing this outside of work. I have had a lot of success in the past with different teams where team members got closer together outside of the work environment. And just through that got closer together. So very simple opportunity, which I highly recommend to do for everyone who is having an existing team, because sometimes the team members don't know too much about themselves, and I've experienced that even with teams and people that have worked five years together, they don't know too much about their personal details, so bring them together and figure out how you.

[00:02:03] Engage them with each other and there are a lot of gamification versions of that. I will not go too much into, into the details. You can use your curiosity and find out and what helps. You can ask them, Hey, what other things you would love to do outside of work? Shall we do a specific thing? Ask them and they will come back and give you the ideas.

[00:02:23] Nothing better than involving the team in a lot of things. 

[00:02:28] Another part is get things out of the way. If it's an existing team and they're already working together, there might be a couple of tensions inside of the team. So you as the leader, need to step in and look in to okay, let's put things onto the table.

[00:02:42] Let's figure out what's the tension. 

[00:02:46] Then going into one-on-ones and or as a total team really be clear and put rules into place that allow the team to be open, that allow the team to collaborate. I think these are the easiest couple of steps to get a team closer together that's already existing.

[00:03:05] Next question, what do we have?

[00:03:07] One team member is impacting the team negatively. How to deal with that?

[00:03:13] That's happening quite often that you have an existing team and one of the team members is either not performing or is slightly negative, and it is through that impacting the team for me the most important thing as a leader is step in and understand what's going on with that team member.

[00:03:31] Not in front of everyone. Have a one-on-one talk to that team member and try to find out what's going on. Most of the time, that wasn't the case from the beginning, and then there's a reason for that. Try to figure out what the reason is. Clarify that. 

[00:03:46] Have a deep talk with that person. 

[00:03:49] I think it's just sometimes enough to listen and you will hear what the problems of that person are.

[00:03:56] So take the time, do that as a leader. Clarify this, and if there is a specific reason that person is willing to share, with is the rest of the team. Then bring the team back in. Have a conversation with the whole team. Be the mediator and the connector of that team with each other. And in case there are a couple of things where you would say, there's a situation where the person is not really willing to change, then be very clear that this is not acceptable.

[00:04:23] Because if you allow this to happen as the leader of a team, that one person is effecting the team negatively over a longer period of time, the whole team will go down. So you as a leader need to step up and say, Hey, we have a challenge here. If this challenge is existing, we need to find a solution to that. And sometimes it's as easy as speaking these things out. Let's have a look how can we solve this. 

[00:04:48] How do we work together? What are the different things we need to change as a team as working with each other? What are the things this person needs to change? 

[00:04:55] Bring this person in and let this person be part of the solution and let this person develop the solution, because then it's more likely that this person will do the solutions as well.

[00:05:06] So I think that's our couple of inputs to that. 

[00:05:10] Another question 

[00:05:11] How do you manage team performance? 

[00:05:15] For me, it's important to set a team goal, set a direction for the team, and then put metrics in place, put KPIs on how do you measure this specific goal.

[00:05:25] It's very clear for everyone understanding what the KPI is and what the goal is, and what the timeframe is to reach this goal. And then measure the performance of the individual team members and the total team. Very simple said sometimes not often done because people are scared to measure individual performance. But I think it's very, very important, specific in a virtual environment where you're not sitting next to each other and don't have too much connections on a day-to-day basis. 

[00:05:55] You need to measure things. You need to make that clear and transparent. Make the outcomes on a daily basis if possible, if not even more on an hourly basis, but better on a daily base transparent so that everyone can see where they are in the performance metrics of that team.

[00:06:15] And I know that sometimes a little scary, especially when you work in larger organization because there are a lot of unions involved. There are a lot of workers councils. And for me it's not about that you need to drive this team to the extent to perform on the upper limit of everything.

[00:06:30] It's just being sure that you keep the balance of the team with the performance where you're heading. And again, that goes back to the goal setting, how ambitions you set that goal and how deeply you measure things. For me it's not a negative thing and not a scary thing. 

[00:06:45] It's just an open transparent way of looking at things and then keep an eye on that. That's maybe important. 

[00:06:51] They're always overachievers and people who are driving performance in team, not that's bad, that's very good and you want to have that, but there're as well people who are not always the highest performers.

[00:07:02] So look at the team dynamics and see that they're not forcing each other in a negative way. That there are no tensions in the team. That's your job as the leader of that team. Very important so thats I think key parts of managing team performance. 

[00:07:18] Another question I have. 

[00:07:20] How to select the right team members for a new team?

[00:07:24]  I think it really depends. What is your goal? What is the team you want to build? Do you have specific roles in that team? Do you need a specific type? Do you need innovators? Do you need performance drivers? Do you . Need organizers? Or do you need gatekeepers that are keeping things together and more operating things?

[00:07:44] That's a key part. Understanding when you put a team together, what is the goal? What is the vision, short term and long term? Because that's important to understand where you want to be with that team. And then putting the team together that allows you to make this happen, but as well, that's not falling apart if you have achieved the first couple of goals.

[00:08:02] So that's step number one, understanding that will help you to find the right team members. And then of course like I said in one of the other Q&A's the diversity is super important. Diversity of thoughts with a team that helps you to achieve things and then find the right candidates.

[00:08:22] I am always a big fan of starting internal look internally, how you can find team members that understand the culture of the organization that have been working in different parts, and then put team members together that might never have worked together into one team so that they're bringing different capabilities, but as well different backgrounds from the organization into one team.

[00:08:46] That helps you drive performance even better and help to achieve the goals, obviously, depending on what the goal with that is. 

[00:08:55] Yes. I got a question. That's a good one. 

[00:08:58] You mentioned clear engagement rules for a team. Can you give an example? , I think I mentioned a little bit of that.

[00:09:06] Be very, very open and transparent and enable the team to develop this engagement rules. I always do this because it's very, very easy to put things on the table, and then it's the baby of the team and they have put the rules for themselves rather than me as a leader putting them on the team. Discuss things openly.

[00:09:28] I think that's one of the rules that's crucial. And it's not often done in teams and organizations. Built a meeting that's just focused on that. It doesn't need to be every week, every month, but built different, maybe even in an external environment where it's not normal work environment where you can put things on the table, but as well enable this between the different team members on a regular base.

[00:09:53]  It feels like there's a little bit tension between you and you let's figure this out. Do you need me to help you? Or are you willing to do this on your own? So just having as a leader this small specific things will help you to do that. Then teach the team as well on how to give feedback. 

[00:10:11] Often underrated because everyone knows, yeah, of course I know how to do feedback and happy to do a deeper version on how to give feedback in one of the future videos. But I think it's important to understand how you give feedback. Because if you have a clear understanding as a total team, this is the feedback culture we want to have and that's the way we give feedback.

[00:10:32] Then if you don't give it in the right way people can flag that straight away, Hey, we have said we're not going to do this in this way. So let's go back to the agreement which we had. And I think that's where you can use the rules inside of the team for the team. So they're basically keeping themselves in check.

[00:10:50] If you have questions reach out to us.

[00:10:52] I'm happy to answer them or bring someone else in who is better in that specific topic, we do from now on every Saturday, same time a Q&A. If you have questions, we can bring that next week in. If you have a couple of deeper questions, you are welcome to reach out to us. Go to wearesucceed.com there's a contact form where you can reach out to us.

[00:11:15] You can reach out to me wherever you see me on social media. Happy to answer you directly as well, or jump on a call. And obviously we have the library of all Q&A's we ever did inside of our blog at wearesucceed.com. That's it for today. I wish you a fantastic Saturday and a great weekend.

[00:11:36] See you next week and thank you very much for joining.